2012-10-03
Explanation
In this comic, a doctor delivers alternating rounds of "bad news" and "good news" to a patient about their impending death. Bad news: you're going to die. Good news: the will to live is just evolutionary programming, and technology can remove it. Bad news: the more you think about it, the more you realize that changing your primal feelings represents personal annihilation -- "death himself, disguised in your delusion of persistent consciousness." Good news: technology can remove your ability to feel bad about that too. Bad news: before performing that procedure, you'll recognize it as equivalent to the first one, only now it's two steps instead of one. Good news: they can add so many incremental steps that your consciousness experiences only a "gentle fading out."
The patient finally begs, "Can I just have a gallon of morphine?" and the doctor (depicted as a green alien-like figure) replies, "Sorry, I don't believe in euthanasia." The comic is a darkly humorous exploration of the philosophical "ship of Theseus" problem as applied to consciousness and identity. It satirizes the idea that gradually altering someone's mind to eliminate the fear of death is functionally identical to killing them, but spread over enough steps to seem acceptable. The final punchline highlights the absurd hypocrisy of a doctor who will happily destroy a patient's consciousness incrementally but draws the line at straightforward euthanasia.